Update on Fertility Specialist Appointment

My appointment at the Center for Reproductive Medicine went well. I met with Laura Tatpati, MD and she was very nice and a pleasure to speak with. We discussed my history and what my options are since I have already done five IUI's (intrauterine insemination's) with donor sperm. I produce one follicle each month naturally and that has not improved since I have been taking Femara for ovulation induction. I have taken 2 months of 2.5 mg and one month of 5.0 mg each ending up with one mature follicle so it's not any better/worse taking the medication.

Her recommendation is to continue taking 2.5 mg of Femara cycle days 3-7 and add Follistim or Gonal-F 150 units injectable fertility medication on cycle days 3 and 5 to try to increase the number of mature follicles to 3 or 4. She thoroughly informed us of the increased risk of multiples using this combination oral and injectable drug therapy. Our chance of having twins is around 25% and triplets around two percent. It was quite surreal to sit in the waiting room of the fertility clinic and flip through the photo book and see only twins and triplets in the photos. At one point I closed the book and looked at the spine to make sure I didn't have the "multiples" photo album.

She did an ultrasound of my lady parts, I got to see my uterus and ovaries in 4-D so that was something kind of neat. Everything looking fine.

I will be able to do my ultrasound monitoring in Great Bend but I will have to go to the clinic (200 miles away) for the IUI procedure.

The clinic requires us to see a licensed therapist since we are using donor sperm before we can do the next cycle. I think this is totally ridiculous considering we have already done five insemination's and how do they think I will find someone and then get in for the appointment in the next week? They also had to redo all of my blood tests that I had done in July because the lab that was not FDA approved that did the tests. How is a hospital lab not approved? When I told them that I want to use the same sperm bank that I have been using they said they would have to check with Midwest Sperm Bank to make sure they met all of the criteria. I have this big feeling that they will not let me use MWSB because all of the information they gave me has listed California Cryobank and Farifax Cryobank.

I left feeling VERY confused and a little disappointed because of all of the BS we have to do before the next cycle.